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.‘Sisters! Cleanse our land of this abomination!’Kaiku steeled herself and unleashed her kana at it.The vast, pulsing black tangle filled her world and engulfed her.The touch of it was like acid, but through the burning she fought to untangle the threads of the witchstone, to find purchase to get inside it.Its radiance was so terrible that even the Weavers had not been able to come near to plant explosives, like they must have done at Utraxxa.The Sisters had only to bore inward and they would be inside the web of the witchstones, able to spread to every stone in Saramyr.But each moment they wasted was a moment closer to that when the Weavers would break through the lingering defences that the Sisters had left on the door to the chamber above.Then the Tkiurathi would be killed – Tsata would be killed – and the Sisters would be next.The Weavers would send an elevator full of Aberrants down, and it would be the end.She gritted her teeth, scratched and picked at the witch-stone ferociously, but it did no good.Frustration grew in her.She could find nowhere amid the awful mass that would permit her entry to the thing: its exterior defences were too dense.No Sister had ever Weaved into a witchstone before, and now they found that they had underestimated the difficulty greatly.Cailin sent an instruction to them all, and they battled their way through the whirling disorder and sewed themselves together.In one slender needle of intent, they thrust at the witchstone, driving into it; but incredibly, it held.They managed to make fractional headway before the point of the needle was blunted and expelled.They struck again, to no avail.The Sisters began to try anything and everything they could.They attempted to make themselves diffuse, to seep into it like gas through the pores of a membrane; they tried attacking it from many angles at once; they worked at unpeeling it like an onion.Nothing worked.It remained invincible, and their best efforts did not even scratch it.Kaiku was exhausted.The sheer mental strain of being in its presence was becoming too much, and Weaving on top of that was draining her utterly.What was more, her kana was being diverted to repair the damage that was being done to her physical body.She could feel the witchstone’s insidious rays changing her, making minuscule alterations, causing tiny cancers and encouraging unusual and unnatural processes into life.Her kana was automatically fixing this corruption as it occurred.If not for that, it would not have been long before she became like the elder Edgefathers were: repulsive freaks, warped beyond recognition.She dropped out of the Weave, and realised that she was on her knees on the rough floor of the cavern.Her legs had been unable to support her any longer.She was gasping for breath, her body aching.Spirits, no.Not when we are so close.We cannot fail here.Ocha, emperor of the gods, help us now if you can.Help me fulfil my oath.Show me how to end this evil.And the answer came to her.A possibility so awful that she at first dismissed it out of hand, but then, despairingly, she realised that it was the only chance they had left.She could sense the Sisters fruitlessly battering at the witchstone, and knew that even Cailin’s skill could not help them now.She thought of all that would be lost if the Sisters fell here.Of all the beauty she remembered from her childhood: the rinji birds on the Kerryn, the sun through the leaves of the Forest of Yuna, the dazzling waters of Mataxa Bay.All that would pass into a memory, and eventually even memories would fade.The skies would die.And after the Near World was gone, after their planet had been enshrouded as the Xhiang Xhi had predicted, then Aricarat would spread outward, into whatever was beyond.It was too much, too much responsibility to comprehend.So she thought only of Tsata.She would save his life, if she could.Even if it meant trading her own.For pash.She drew the leering red and black Mask from her dress and slipped it over her head.‘Kaiku!’ Cailin shrieked, seeing what she was doing.‘Kaiku, no!’With the Mask on her face, she Weaved.The world shattered, and there was nothing but delirium and pain [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]